Creature (29 page)

“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Sharon, they’re here! They’ve come for me, Sharon! What will I do?”

There was a crash, and the bedroom door burst open. Chuck, followed by two attendants, burst into the room, stared bleakly at her for a moment, and while she stood speechlessly watching him, came over, took the phone from her hand and replaced the receiver.

“It’s going to be all right, darling,” he told her, putting
his arms around her and holding her gently as he nodded to the two other men. As one of them disappeared from the room, the other came forward and slipped a needle into her shoulder.

Too stunned by what was happening even to protest, Charlotte began sobbing silently as the drug took quick effect. A moment later the second attendant reappeared with a collapsible gurney.

Charlotte was already unconscious when they lifted her onto the stretcher.

   Sharon gazed dumbly at the phone that had gone dead in her hand, as if she didn’t quite understand what had happened. But a moment later she made up her mind, riffled through the pages of the thin Silverdale phone book until she found the LaConners’ address, then hunched into her jacket as she ran out of the house, cursing softly under her breath over the fact that she and Blake had decided against replacing the worn-out Subaru he’d used for commuting in San Marcos. Right now, the last thing she needed was a leisurely walk. By the time she reached the corner, she was already half trotting, the memory of the crash she’d heard over the phone still ringing in her ears. And Charlotte had sounded so frightened, so utterly terrified.

She broke into a jog, moving through the sharp mountain air completely oblivious to the biting cold. She paused at the corner of Colorado Street, and was about to cross it when an ambulance, its lights flashing but its siren silent, sped through the intersection. It turned left and disappeared around a bend. She swore again, suspecting that Charlotte was in the vehicle, knowing that if she’d had a car, she would have followed it. But there was nothing she could do now, and catching her breath, she trotted across the street then on toward Pueblo Avenue and the LaConners’ house.

From the outside it looked no different from the other
houses on the block. Set well back from the sidewalk, it was almost an exact copy of the Tanners’ own house. Yet there was something about the house—a sense of something wrong—that made Sharon uneasy. She glanced at the car in the driveway, then hurried up the front steps and pressed the door bell. There was no answer. After a moment Sharon pressed the bell again, then tried the door and found it unlocked. Her heart quickening, she pushed the door open and leaned inside.

“Charlotte?” she called out tentatively. “Charlotte, it’s Sharon Tanner. Are you here?”

There was still no answer. Sharon stepped over the threshold, pushing the door closed behind her. She heard a movement upstairs, and a moment later Chuck LaConner appeared at the top of the steep flight of stairs, a suitcase in his hand. He paused, startled to see her.

“Sharon,” he said. Then his eyes clouded. “That was you Charlotte was talking to on the phone, wasn’t it?”

Sharon nodded. “What’s happened to her?” she asked. “Is she all right?” Her eyes shifted to the suitcase.

Chuck held it up as if offering it as proof of something. “I’m afraid I’m in a hurry,” he said, starting down the stairs.

“Where is she, Chuck?” Sharon asked. “What’s going on?”

Chuck said nothing for a moment, then his shoulders slumped and he lowered himself wearily to sit on the stairs, still halfway up. “I guess there’s no point in not telling you,” he said at last, his voice hollow. “I—Well, I’ve had to have Charlotte institutionalized.”

The sharp intake of Sharon’s breath made a gasping sound, but Chuck shrugged helplessly. “There was nothing more I could do,” he said. “You saw how she was on Saturday, and since then it only got worse. This morning she seemed a little better, so I went to work. And then an hour ago she called me. She was making all kinds of wild accusations, claiming the telephone was tapped and there were people watching the house.” He shook his head sadly. “It didn’t make any sense, of course, and finally I called a friend down in Canon City.”

Sharon frowned. “Canon City?”

“It’s over on the other side of the mountains, near Pueblo.” His eyes met Sharon’s. “There’s a state mental hospital there,” he said. “My friend is on the staff.”

“I see,” Sharon breathed, licking her lips.

“Anyway,” Chuck went on, “he told me I’d better have Charlotte sent over there. So I called an ambulance, then came home.” His lips tightened. He glanced at his watch, then stood up. “Come on up,” he said. “You won’t believe it.”

Silently, Sharon followed Chuck to the master suite. The door, hanging crookedly from a single hinge, was pushed back against the wall, and the room itself was in chaos.

Chuck’s clothes were strewn all over the floor, and even the drawers had been pulled from the dresser by the wall. “She had the door locked,” he explained. “She told me she was throwing me out, that I was part of some plot she’d dreamed up. She wasn’t anything like rational, and finally, well …” Again, he shrugged then glanced at his watch. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ve got some of Charlotte’s things here, and I have to take them over to Canon City.”

“I see,” Sharon whispered. She gazed around the ruined room once more, then followed Chuck back down the stairs and out of the house. “It—It must have been terrible for you,” she said at last as Chuck tossed the suitcase into the backseat of the LaConners’ Buick.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Chuck agreed as he slid in behind the wheel. His eyes met Sharon’s gaze, and he hastily looked away. “But it’s been a lot worse for her,” he said. “I—I guess I just don’t know what we’re going to do now.”

“If there’s anything I can do,” Sharon began, but Chuck waved her words away.

“I wish there were,” he said sadly. “But I’m afraid there isn’t. Not right now, anyway.”

He started the car, then offered Sharon a lift, but she refused, and a moment later he drove away.

Sharon stood on the sidewalk, watching the Buick until it disappeared, then turned to look at the house once again.

In her memory she heard once more the disjointed telephone call in which Charlotte had pleaded for her help, and once more saw the look that had been in Charlotte’s eyes on Saturday, just before Chuck had led her out of the Tanners’ home.

Don’t believe him
, that look had said.
Please don’t believe him!

Then she pictured the chaos of the master bedroom. Though Chuck’s clothes had been scattered everywhere, she hadn’t seen so much as a trace of Charlotte’s own clothing.

Charlotte’s closet hadn’t even been opened.

And yet Chuck had said he was packing Charlotte’s things to take them to the hospital.

“Don’t worry,” Sharon said now, speaking out loud even though there was no one to hear her. “I don’t believe him. I don’t believe a single word he said!”

18

Sharon gazed uneasily at the TarrenTech building. She’d seen it before, of course, even admired it. It had been so perfectly designed for its environment that it almost looked like an outgrowth of the landscape itself. But now it seemed to have changed, taking on the appearance of an animal crouching in the undergrowth, awaiting its prey. But that was ridiculous, of course—it was nothing but a building, and nothing about it had changed. It was she herself who had changed, and even as she’d walked the half mile from the town out to the low building set amidst landscaped acreage, she’d felt the difference in herself. She’d tried to walk slowly, as if out for nothing more than a leisurely stroll, just in case someone happened to be watching her.

And that, too, was silly, she reminded herself now as she approached the front doors. She’d done nothing except respond to a call for help from an acquaintance. Why should people be watching her? Yet as she drew close to the entrance, she found herself glancing around uneasily, searching for the hidden cameras she knew were trained on her. But the cameras had no personal interest in her; they were nothing more than inanimate objects, continuously scanning the area
around the building, alert for nothing in particular, but nevertheless recording everything that crossed their paths.

It was Charlotte LaConner’s words that had put Sharon’s nerves on edge, and they still echoed in her mind: “They’re going to send me away. They’ve done something terrible with Jeff, and they don’t want me to find out.”

Had she meant TarrenTech, or had she meant the sports center?

Sharon had turned the words over in her mind, looking at them from every direction, and finally come to the conclusion that it didn’t matter exactly what Charlotte had meant, for she was certain that one way or another the sports center, like nearly everything else in Silverdale, was totally dependent on TarrenTech for its survival. An operation like Marty Ames’s couldn’t possibly survive on the fees it could collect as a summer training camp for high school kids.

Unconsciously straightening her posture, Sharon pushed through the door and stepped up to the information desk, where she was met by a smiling receptionist.

“May I help you, Mrs. Tanner?”

Sharon frowned, then glanced instinctively at the girl’s lapel, searching for the identification badge that all TarrenTech employees wore.

This girl wore none.

The girl’s smile broadened as she realized Sharon’s dilemma. “I’m Sandy Davis,” she said. “And you don’t know me. The security system did a photo comparison on you, so I knew who you were even before you came into the building.”

Sharon’s body stiffened. A photo check of
her?
But why? And how? She’d never given the company a picture of herself—they’d never even asked for one. But of course the answer was obvious: the cameras in San Marcos had recorded her comings and goings, and no doubt images of her had been transmitted to Silverdale along with the personnel files on Blake. Still, there was something eerie about it all, something creepy about knowing that she’d been spotted and identified even before she’d entered the building. She returned Sandy Davis’s smile, hoping her nervousness wasn’t showing.

“If you’ll just tell me where my husband’s office is?”

“Just down the hall to the left, turn right, and it’s in the far corner, near Mr. Harris’s.”

Sharon started walking down the long corridor, but now that she was inside the building, the strange sensation of being watched was even stronger. She felt the hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end. Her step instinctively quickened, and she had to remind herself to appear as though nothing was wrong. By the time she reached Blake’s suite, she was walking at a normal pace again. As soon as she stepped into the outer office, his secretary—another woman whom Sharon had never met—offered her a warm smile that was almost an exact copy of Sandy Davis’s. “He’s on the phone right now, but I slipped him a message that you’re here,” she said, after introducing herself with a firm handshake. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Sharon shook her head, and almost immediately the inner door opened and Blake stepped out. “This is a pleasant surprise,” he said, smiling a welcome. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

Sharon quickly blurted out the first thing that came into her mind. “The car,” she said. “I wanted to do some shopping, and the list was too long for my cart.” Then she glanced at the secretary out of the corner of her eye. “Could we go inside?”

Blake looked puzzled, but he nodded and held the door open for her. It was Sharon herself who closed it when they were both in his office. He cocked his head, “What’s going on that you don’t want Ellen to hear?”

“It’s Charlotte LaConner,” she said, automatically lowering her voice. Carefully trying not to betray the emotions churning inside her, she explained to Blake what had happened. When she was finished, Blake looked at her, bewildered.

“You came all the way out here to tell me that?” he asked. “That Charlotte’s had a breakdown? Honey, we both saw that coming a couple of days ago.”

“It’s not that,” Sharon said nervously. “At least not
quite. It’s what she
said
. That ‘they’ had done something to Jeff. I think she must have been referring to the sports center.”

“Or the great communist conspiracy,” Blake observed archly. At the hurt he saw in Sharon’s eyes, he tried to soften his words. “I didn’t mean that,” he said apologetically. “But we know Charlotte was getting paranoid, and with paranoia—”

“Was she?” Sharon interrupted. “I don’t think we know that at all. We know she was upset, and she had every right to be. After what happened with Jeff, why wouldn’t she be?”

Blake took a deep breath, then lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. “All right,” he said. “What’s on your mind? It’s not just Charlotte, is it?”

Sharon hesitated, then shook her head. “I guess not,” she said. “It’s all kinds of things—things that wouldn’t have bothered me at all if it were only one or two of them. But I keep getting the feeling that something’s wrong out here, Blake.” She made an expansive gesture, her trembling hands betraying her worry. “It’s the whole thing—the town, the school, even the kids. Everything is too perfect.”

Blake smiled wryly. “Apparently Jeff LaConner isn’t perfect,” he interjected. Then his expression turned serious. “The Ramirez boy died this morning,” he went on. “I understand his mother is still trying to blame Jeff.”

Sharon’s eyes clouded with tears as she remembered the sad form of Rick Ramirez, but then her thoughts shifted back to Jeff LaConner. “But Jeff’s gone, isn’t he?” she asked. “And Charlotte started making a fuss about Jeff, and now she’s gone, too.”

“Now wait a minute,” Blake began. “It’s starting to sound like you’re buying into—”

Sharon didn’t let him finish. “I’m saying I’m not sure we did the right thing in coming here,” she said. “At first, everything was fine. But now even Mark is starting to change. And it’s happened since he started going to Dr. Ames.”